Paul Allen declared himself a hard-liner in the owners' negotiations with the players in a stunning turn of events on Thursday.

“He’s gone the other way, the complete other way,” a high-ranking league official told Yahoo! Sports. “He’s been the most vociferous lately that [the owners] have given up too much to the players, that they should be holding out for a hard cap, for 40 percent to the players [on the revenue split]. No one has gone after the labor committee harder about this than him.”

Some suspect that Allen's motives are in saving as much money as possible with this CBA in order to ready the Blazers for a sale.

“He’s sort of turned into this era’s Howard Hughes,” said one NBA front office executive.

Allen has a history of disengaging people and things once he loses interest, and that appears to be happening now.

“The worst thing for the Blazers are not the injuries, but Paul losing interest,” said a league official connected to the organization. “And once he loses interest in anything, he doesn’t want to deal with it anymore. He can’t win anymore, so he’s going to literally take his ball and go home.”